Guide for setting up http-replicator, a download cache (proxy) for Ubuntu packages

http-replicator is a powerful Python-based proxy or download cache capable of caching any traffic over http. It's best when used for a network of Ubuntu machines, saving bandwidth and increasing the speed with which updates are obtained by all machines.

NOTE:The deb available from the freshmeat & gertjan.freezope.org page for this package is older then the one here, so please use the one given below.

Its probably worth noting that ? and * are wildcards supported by http-replicator. You can make it accept connections from one host (or multiple hosts if you use --ip= more then once) or an entire subnet (as above).

The other change you might like to do is change the port to 80. What this will do is make http-replicator cache all web trafic, without requiring you to reconfigure any client settings at all. Your resultant line will look something like:

Now, all you have to do is get the clients ready. Note that if you changed the port http-replicator runs on to port 80, the following is unneeded. (The example given below is for proxying packages downloaded by APT).

On the local computer you want to use http-replicator with, add this line to /etc/apt/apt.conf

Acquire::http::Proxy "http://192.168.0.1:8080";

Replace 192.168.0.1 with the IP of the server http-replicator is running on.